Thursday’s Chicago Public Square will arrive an hour later than usual to allow your publisher time to visit (virtually) with WGN Radio host Bob Sirott at 9:45 (correcting) 8:45 a.m. Hear here.
Trump’s Twitter first. A historic but mild rebuke: The president’s tweets have drawn a fact-check advisory from Twitter …
■ … which added these words to two of his outbursts: “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”
■ Predictably, Trump then accused Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and “stifling FREE SPEECH.” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: “Attaching small labels to tweets seems like spitting into a hurricane.”
■ Joe Biden: Trump’s “an absolute fool” for refusing to wear a face mask.
Slow streets. Chicago’s moving to open some roads to pedestrians …
■ … more than two months after Streetsblog Chicago and others began lobbying for that change.
■ Illinois driver’s license offices reopen beginning June 1.
■ Business is “absolutely crazy” for Chicago-born Home Run Inn pizza.
‘Nearly every person was Black.’ Public records obtained by Block Club Chicago show that almost all Chicago police arrests and citations for congregating during the pandemic lockdown have been executed on the city’s South and West Sides.
■ Hours after video showed a Minneapolis cop kneeling on a handcuffed man’s neck—even after he pleaded he couldn’t breathe and had stopped moving—four officers involved in the man’s arrest and death have been fired.
■ Chicagoans took to the streets last night to protest in solidarity with Minneapolitans.
■ Mayor Lightfoot didn’t hide her displeasure with Chicago’s new top cop’s leadership through the city’s deadly Memorial Day weekend: “This was a fail.”
■ A celebrity has issued a definitive apology: Jimmy Fallon acknowledges wearing blackface on Saturday Night Live 20 years ago. “There is no excuse for this. I am very sorry for making this unquestionably offensive decision and thank all of you for holding me accountable.”
Do you recall …? A benighted—sorry, Republican—Illinois state representative has launched a campaign to recall Gov. Pritzker for shortcomings in the state unemployment program through the pandemic.
■ Pritzker turned the tables in his response: “I’m glad … the representative … now believes that we ought to fund state government instead of hollow it out.”
■ Beachwood Reporter founder Steve Rhodes: “I’ve been as hard as anyone on the governor … and his laughable claims about how well everything is going. … What bothers me even more … is the failure to acknowledge that virtually every state unemployment office in these United States is having the same difficulties.”
HBO’s next. It’s the dawn of AT&T’s big play in the streaming wars, HBO Max …
■ … with a base price of $14.99 a month …
■ … but free to many AT&T wireless customers and most current HBO subscribers …
■ … although not, at least for now, if you get HBO through Comcast (update, 11:58 a.m.: They have a deal.) …
■ … or if you watch HBO on Roku.
■ Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper: HBO Max’s first new series is “an underwhelming romantic comedy/drama.”
JK Rowling’s new ground. The creator of the Harry Potter series is publishing her first non-Potter children’s book online—for free.
■ TV critic Mary McNamara praises FX’s Mrs. America, which wraps up tonight, as “possibly the bravest show in the history of television”—because it’s willing to break your heart: “Voldemort takes over Hogwarts.”
■ Apple TV+ is betting big on a Fraggle Rock revival.
Take off. NASA and SpaceX were planning history’s first launch of humans into Earth orbit aboard a commercial aerospace vessel, around 3:30 this afternoon, Chicago time.
■ Watch it on the web here.
Thanks, Mike Braden and Gail Kelly, for some proofreading improvement to this update.